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Casino Surveillance News March 2006 Welcome to Casino Surveillance News. The newsletter, in a more colorful and hopefully easier-to-read format, can be accessed at http://www.casinosurveillancenews.com/newsletter.htm. Our sponsors for this issue are: 1. CASINO SURVEILLANCE OPERATIONS MANUAL, 2005 EDITION, includes all of the material in the original manual plus materials written since 2003, including the Evidence Series and other articles most recently written. The book has been rearranged for optimum training use. The new edition will still be in use at University of Nevada Las Vegas School of Gaming in their Casino Surveillance course. For more information on the book, visit http://www.casinosurveillancenews.com/bookstore.htm. 2. The INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CERTIFIED SURVEILLANCE PROFESSIONALS is a group of like-minded individuals dedicated to improving the training and professionalism of Casino Surveillance personnel. We require that members be currently employed in a Casino Surveillance department at time of enrollment. Training seminars are offered for members on a quarterly basis. For more information visit the website at http://www.iacsp.org/ If you cannot access the Internet site www.casinosurveillancenews.com from the computer where you receive the newsletter, please re-subscribe from your home address or other email address. Many of my subscribers may have restrictions on their internet access at work. Job Opening Announcements: CASINO CAREERS has continual new openings, from operator up through manager and director positions. Currently Casino Careers is advertising for Director/Manager positions, supervisors, investigators and techs. Security openings include a manager position and a field training officer, as well as a number of security officer positions. Visit this page to see Casino Careers online clients' Surveillance job postings: http://www.casinocareers.com/jobsearch.cfm?did=18 EMPIRE CASINO RECRUITMENT has continual new openings, especially for non-US positions. Check http://www.empirecasinorecruitment.com/empirecasinorecruitment/website/jobsall.htm frequently, and use their category buttons. Due to the amount of time pressure I am currently under, as well as total disgust with operating a computer and software that has let me down at (only) critical times over the past six months, I am eliminating the Casino News section of this newsletter until further notice. We will have Training Announcements and keynote article only for the next several months. If you still desire industry news, I can recommend the following sites. Each has its own newsletter, and in fact I have been using the work done by the individuals running these sites for several months to shorten the time invested in news searches. www.bj21.com www.urbino.net www.ascendgaming.com www.rgtonline.com www.gamingfloor.com At some point in the future I will go back to culling news items specifically of interest to Casino Surveillance and Security personnel. Hope you stick with me until I do. This month’s keynote article is the fourth of five sections taken from a 25-page article regarding TEAMWORK between casino Surveillance and the other departments of the hotel-casino operation. I am currently writing three other articles that will go in as they are completed, following the five sections of this article. Teamwork Part III Working with Casino and Department Managers By Jim Goding Section 4 Cage The Casino Cage has to be protected from a variety of means of both internal and external theft, and once again, the key to all of them is internal controls and procedures and investigation by Internal Audits and Surveillance. Some of the problems that loosely-run cashier cages are vulnerable to are: Counterfeit money Bad checks, stolen and forged checks Stolen or forged credit cards Counterfeit casino chips Short-change cons Theft by cashiers from customers Robbery Human error Chip fill and credit scams Credit (marker) scams Fraudulent credit applications Money laundering operations The majority of these can be countered by strictly adhering to internal controls, checkout procedures, and by investigating closely any and all reported shortages and overages, or suspicious persons or activities. New hires should be watched by surveillance for a period of time, and closely trained in the house procedures by their supervisors. Background checks on personnel should be done, and suspicious activities (such as living beyond means, gambling problems, credit problems) should raise a cautionary flag to managers and Surveillance. Strictly requiring identification checking on unknown customers, periodic review of the solvency of credit accounts, and checking of especially non-local payroll and personal checks should be routine. Surveillance’s role in this is to periodically audit cage operations and report discrepancies and departures from procedure. This is only possible in a tightly run Cage. Routine transaction procedures should be clearly published and universally trained into cashiers and supervisors: Cheque handling (how to break down and count chips) Money handling (procedures for plainly counting out money for customers) One transaction cleared from window or area prior to another one beginning, including one customer’s multiple transactions Check clearing and cashing procedures Marker payoff procedures Auditing procedures End-shift count procedures In addition, most of the same restrictions outlined above under Change Booths should also apply to the Casino Cage. A word is required here regarding Surveillance coverage of the cage: completeness. There should be no blind spots in the Cage or Soft Count, no areas where people can move where they are not under one or another camera. Each window should have a high-resolution fixed camera that covers the full area where transactions take place, including the cash drawer itself and other storage areas for cash, change or chips. In addition, the cage should have coverage of the customer areas for each window, so that a clear facial shot is acquired on each customer. All counting areas of the cage (including the supervisor’s desk, if any) and all storage areas should be easily visible under one or another camera. This camera coverage should be obvious. A prime deterrent to crime of this nature is the certainty that someone can look at a video record and get a picture of the criminal. It is also helpful to have enough wide-angle fixed cameras that can see the entire range of activities in the cage, as well as a couple of PTZ cameras that can be used to closely watch specific areas at choice. Key Control In many casinos, one of the more important functions controlled by the Cage is control of keys. Critical access keys, such as Soft Count, Hard Count, Drop Box and Slots, are kept in a locker in the cage. It is very important that procedures for checking keys in and out of this area are strictly adhered to. It is not difficult to make impressions of most keys, and a duplicate is easy to make with common workshop tools. In most areas, the cage itself does not have access to this key locker without another key, which is kept by another department (such as Security) or executive. Along with key control goes control of key blanks for the most critical locks (drop boxes, bill validators and vaults) and control of the equipment for duplicating electronic key cards. It should be noted that a skilled person can use the same equipment the hotel has for electronic hotel keys to create a duplicate of the key cards used for access to slot machines and other doors. These key-card machines are available on the market as well. Security There are few areas of the casino that are not accessible to Security, and thus, a crooked person in uniform or a bad Supervisor can do untold damage to the casino. In addition, Security handles many activities that pose liability to the casino, chief among them being patron safety and the handling of unruly guests and criminal suspects. An untrained or poorly supervised Security force thus can be very dangerous. Security is also the area where teamwork with Surveillance is most important. Surveillance serves as the eyes and memory for Security, and Security serves as the ears and hands of Surveillance. Alert security officers draw Surveillance attention to areas where things might be going wrong, and Surveillance pulls Security in to more closely investigate or handle situations as they occur. Surveillance gathers data and video evidence and reports immediate situations to Security. Security does the actual handling of customers, suspects and problems. Where teamwork does not exist between Security and Surveillance, both are crippled and the casino complex itself is at severe risk in many ways. It is very important to remember that Surveillance provides, in many cases, the only defense and backup for Security when claims are made of misconduct by officers. Officers should not be shy of the cameras, but should, unless they are dishonest, welcome their presence. Unfortunately, it is also usually much more apparent to the remote and relatively invisible viewpoint of Surveillance than it is to Security Supervisors when officers make errors, get lazy, fail to follow procedures, or commit outright theft. Just as Surveillance backs up Security with evidence, it is also in most cases the most necessary check and balance on the activities of the security force. Since it is a natural and necessary part of Security forces that they operate as a team within themselves, the two departments often end up at odds with each other, when Security officers or supervisors subjectively perceive that Surveillance is in some way a threat to Security or that Security is being “picked on.” This often results in Security chiefs trying to defend their officers’ errors or actions, when if these same things were picked up by the chiefs themselves, immediate training or disciplinary action would be the result. The key in this is to maintain the chain of command, and for Surveillance especially to maintain reports as fact, devoid of opinion and conjecture, when reporting misconduct or errors on the part of Security. Published policy and procedure must always be the guideline for both Surveillance and Security. Of course, standards for Security must be maintained at a very high level, because of their routine access to all areas of the casino and the potential in Security activities for liability to the company. Also a part in maintaining the chain of command is that, when Surveillance forwards its complete and factual reports on errors or misconduct by security officers, the upper levels of the Security chain of command must take full responsibility, no matter what action is taken as a result. Blaming Surveillance should not be an option. The complement to this is that Surveillance crew should be very well versed in exactly what is expected and required of Security, so that unreal reports, picayune reports, and reports based on observers’ opinions are never made, or if made by green investigators, are not forwarded. Equally important is that errors should be treated as errors, not misconduct, and that training should always be the emphasis of action as a result of isolated errors or errors made in ignorance. One more thing should be mentioned here. When a Security officer or supervisor refuses to cooperate with Surveillance, does not make required or common-sense notifications to Surveillance, complains incessantly about Surveillance, makes false verbal reports about Surveillance or attempts to avoid, in his activities, the attention of Surveillance, that person is suspect. He or she is a liability to the company, both in routine activities and in whatever he or she is attempting to hide from Surveillance. See “Politics” and “False Reports.” Food and Beverage There are a number of areas in Food and Beverage that are vulnerable to theft both internal and external, some of them obvious and some not so much, and other areas of potential liability as well: Cashiers, host and servers Bartenders, bar-backs and cocktail servers Stocks and materiel inventory and storage (especially liquor storage) Sanitation (kitchen, bar and restaurant areas) Safety Incredibly, losses through the bars and restaurants by internal theft and abuses of comps can sometimes exceed the income from these areas. Worse, it is very common for the management of the area to be intimately involved in some forms of theft from these areas. When F&B is not showing a profit, Surveillance teamwork should be severely restricted to senior management (at least one step above the level of the F&B Manager) and Internal Audits. I will try to take up each of these areas in turn. Cashiers and servers (restaurant): This is an area where abuses of comps occur very frequently in the casino restaurant environment, exceeded only by the bars. Internal audit should watch carefully for evidence of missing meals, duplicate tickets, overcharges and undercharges. Once these are found, it is possible to narrow down the list of suspects and work together with Surveillance to get video evidence of the theft. The most common scam in this area in casinos is for a comp slip to be used for more meals than it has been written for, or for more expensive meals. The server or cashier takes the comp slip and allows the patron to go on his way with no further action. Or the server has the patron sign the comp, but not the actual receipt for the meal. Then the comp is used to pay for multiple meals from another table or for a far more expensive meal, and the difference is pocketed. Or the correct meal is served, but another, more expensive, meal is rung up, and the difference is pocketed from another area. It is also common for comps and especially coupons to be used, after the patron has left, as a substitute for a cash buy. Restaurants that allow meals to be charged to the patron’s hotel room are subject to similar abuses. Variations on these themes are nearly infinite, and when evidence of theft (such as vastly more food coming in than is paid for, complaints from customers about meal charges to rooms, comp accounts running far over what the customer has knowledge of, etc.) is found by Audits or though customer complaints, both Audits and Surveillance must think, find the holes in existing controls and procedures and document the evidence. Proper internal controls and procedures are the key. When a restaurant area has good controls already written and they are not followed, the management of the restaurant area is also suspect, as they may themselves be involved, if only for a kickback from the people actually doing it. Outright theft occurs as well. Sometimes meals are simply never rung up, though the patron pays. You may find that a server is feeding his or her whole extended family, and the tickets never reach the cashier (a common coupon scam). Watch especially for evidence that server/cashiers are commingling tips with the cash drawer, counting the drawer before the end of the shift (and removing overages), or substituting comp slips or room tickets for cash. Watch for claimed “walkouts” that have not been reported to security, and keep track of meals that have been “written off” because of return by the customer or wastage (such as dropped trays, etc.). Protective controls in this area include requiring that a receipt be given to every customer, and matching a signed cash register ticket with every signed comp slip in the documentation for the shift. Do not allow servers to present comp slips for signature without a matching cash register ticket that details the food and beverages served. Employee meals served in the public restaurant should be tracked as well. This is mainly, of course, the business of Internal Audits. Once violations have been found, it is the job of Surveillance to document actual occurrences by video evidence. One more thing needs to be mentioned: tip theft by bussers or other servers. If complaints begin to be received by restaurant managers about servers or cleaners stealing the servers’ tips, this needs to be followed up. Though no actual loss occurs to the restaurant assets because of this, you can be sure that any staff member who is willing to rip off his fellow employees is also very likely to be stealing from the company as well. Bartenders, bar-backs and cocktail servers: Most of the material under “cashiers and servers” applies to the bar as well, and even more so. It is a common joke that union rules for bartenders are that they get paid wages and tips plus whatever they can get away with stealing. The most common scam in the casino environment is for the bartender (or server) to ring up paid drinks as comps and pocket the price as well as the tip. After this is to ring up and serve “call” drinks (brand-name liquor requested by the patron) as well drinks, while charging for the call. There are literally hundreds of ways that a bartender can steal from the house. A prime consideration is that bottled liquor, especially premium brands, is an easily moved commodity. Liquor could be going out the back door or over the counter in a number of ways, undercharged, overcharged or never charged (except to the bartender or bar-back, etc.). A very important control here is that every drink served at the bar be accounted for by a line on the master register ticket. Though comps on the casino floor are not signed for by the patron, bar comps should be. Drinks charged to hotel room accounts must be signed for, and the receipt should state at least whether it is a well drink or brand liquor. Paid drinks should be served with a cash register ticket showing the amount charged. Another area to watch for is employee abuse of comp privileges. Often pit and slot floormen, security or other employees are allowed a limited number of drinks “on the house.” This is often abused, and as well carries another liability for the company: an employee who drinks on the house, then gets in his car and drives away in an “under the influence” condition, puts the house at risk of extremely severe lawsuits and other legal actions, up to and including loss of licenses. There are a number of technological aids to surveillance monitoring of F&B. Chief among these, after the camera, is the cash-register interface, which prints across the designated screen or recording a duplicate of what has been rung up on the cash register. When synchronized with video recordings of the bar areas, these provide a good method of detection of the most common forms of theft outlined above. Stocks and materiel inventory and storage (especially liquor storage): Food and beverage stocks (including linens, dishes and glassware, cooking and cleaning tools and consumables of all types) are all very useful outside the restaurant and bar areas as well, and these storage and use areas are subject to both petty and large-scale pilferage, especially food and beverage items themselves—liquor, meats and other premium food items topping the list. Teamwork in this area should be very tight between F&B execs, Surveillance and Internal Audits. Increases in costs, decreases in bottom line, should attract the attention of Internal Audits, and any patterns revealed in investigations should be relayed to Surveillance. Surveillance should do routine surveillance of storage areas, and key control for liquor storage should be coordinated with Security. A very important part of this is the concept of the back-door pass. Staff in F&B, especially bar staff, should be tracked when they leave the buildings, and should never be allowed to go in and out of the building during their shift or allowed into storage areas when not on the clock. Back-door passes should be required (and items carried out of the buildings inspected by Security) for any items, including packs, large purses and bags of any kind. It doesn’t take much space to carry out a thirty or fifty-dollar bottle of liquor, or a hundred bucks worth of steaks or lobster. A system should be in place, known to Surveillance and Security, for tracking replacement of working stocks in the bars and restaurants, so that discrepancies can be tracked. Paper trails should be kept on file by F&B execs, available to Internal Audits and Surveillance and Security investigators. A key point for both Surveillance and Internal Audits to remember is that F&B executive positions are often sought, not for pay and benefits, but for the access these positions provide to potentially lucrative stocks. When problems have been found by Internal Audits or Surveillance, attempts by F&B supervisors and execs to “explain away” should be considered as suspicious. Surveillance should maintain camera coverage of liquor and premium food item storage areas, as well as the areas for storage of cleaning supplies and other consumables. Routine checks during slow hours can often catch unauthorized access and removal of stocks. Sanitation (kitchen, bar and restaurant areas): It is a very expensive thing for a company to lose restaurant health certification or pay fines, when in fact maintaining standards for these areas is simply a matter of correct training, supervision and discipline of the people involved. Surveillance should have camera coverage in kitchen and other food preparation areas, and routinely audit these areas during busy hours for abuses of sanitation rules. Staff doing these audits should have a good concept of commercial-kitchen cleanliness and a basic understanding of health department rules. Reports on abuses should come to attention of senior management as well as F&B execs (on chain of command) to ensure that training and correction of erring staff does take place. We have seen serious abuses in various restaurant kitchens, most relatively minor, and a few bad enough to put us off eating in those restaurants until correction could take place. Safety: Safety of staff and hotel guests should be kept seriously in mind when doing scans of casino and hotel spaces. People tend to do things without thinking, and this is where accidents to both guests and other staff take place. Some of the things we have seen during routine scans include cleaning staff standing on top of slot machines while using a backpack vacuum, with the cord for it stretched across a major casino aisle; vacuum and shampooer cords stretched across the top of an escalator; racing down aisles with a heavily loaded change cart; spraying chemicals into hot light fixtures; leaks originating in a clogged drained running down through a light fixture on the floor below. These are a few: just imagine the consequences if one or more of these had not been caught. Reports of safety violations should reach the supervisors concerned, again, through chain of command, to ensure that correct training and correction of staff occurs. Surveillance staff themselves should participate in company safety training, so that they are working on the same knowledge base as the areas concerned. Teamwork with Security supervisors for handling immediate hazards to guests and staff, and the ability to communicate with the head of housekeeping when safety hazards and violations occur, can save the company untold amounts in hospital bills and lawsuits. Many thousands of guest and staff accidents occur in hotels every year, and a majority of these could be avoided by proper care, training, and safety-conscious thinking on the part of staff. Critical areas for accidents are kitchens, areas being cleaned, and restaurants and bars. Spilled liquids and mishandling of kitchen tools and hot foods lead the list. However, construction and renovation sites are also prime sources of hazards and accidents. Purchasing and Receiving Both outright theft and subtler forms occur in this area. Surveillance should maintain coverage of docks and other receiving areas, storage areas and the routes between. Internal Audits routinely checks for unusual variations in orders, discrepancies between amounts received and amounts used or distributed, unusual variations in cost, discrepancies between order and receipts, etc. Reports of discrepancies can guide the efforts of Surveillance in determining where missing materiel and stocks might be going and who is responsible, and guide the efforts of documenting evidence. Other things to look for include lack of security of received materials, such as pallet loads being left in unsecured areas, vulnerable to casual theft. However, it is the subtler forms of theft that often lead to major losses. It is not unusual for purchasing agents to receive or require kickbacks from vendors in order to do business with them. When this occurs, vast amounts of company assets could be going out the door in the form of increased costs. It is also common for vendors to inflate the cost of purchases, paying off the purchasing agent and pocketing the difference directly, or selling inferior goods at premium prices. Goods and materials purchased by the company are sold to staff or public or taken home for private use. Anything you might ever have heard about military quartermaster or government purchasing also occurs in the private sector. Businesses with no overhead or cost of product tend to be very profitable, so positions in Purchasing and Receiving are often sought by crooks. Background checks on applicants should be as exhaustive as those on casino executives, and should include credit checks. Some of the indicators of theft in Purchasing and Receiving are: Too many vendors for the same items (six produce suppliers?) P&R staff living beyond means or gambling heavily Lack of profitability in restaurants Discrepancies between Purchase Orders and amount received Discrepancies between Purchase Orders and specific items received Discrepancies between Purchase Orders and amounts sold or used Lower quality of materials than what was purchased Reduced quality of food served in restaurants Unusual variations in amounts ordered Heavy comp budget for P&R manager No bidding system for capital purchases (pre-selected vendors) Major difficulty in receiving items ordered and approved Items having to be purchase-ordered multiple times When discrepancies begin to show up, links between the personnel (from the bottom up) in Purchasing and Receiving and other areas should also be checked out. It is common for teams of two or more people to work scams in these areas, and often a simple thing like one of them going on a vacation can uncover the first indications of crooked activity. Partially filled Purchase orders signed off for months or years as complete in one area might never show up until someone different receives the materials, in the absence of the normal receiver. This is the end of the fourth of five sections of the TEAMWORK PART III article. Part Four will be published in at the beginning of March, and starts with the section on teamwork with the Cage. Copyright 2005, 2006 by Jim Goding. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized sales, copying or distribution is a violation of law and of the proprietary rights of the author. That’s all for this month folks. Subscribe Now to Casino Surveillance News: http://www.casinosurveillancenews.com/subscribe.htm Mailing List Policy: Our mailing list will never be sold to ANYONE, and we will never send spam. No special mailings will go out for advertising purposes. The only use for this list will be the newsletter and any major flash that looks important enough that you will all want to know. Copyright © 2005 by Jim Goding. All rights reserved. Unauthorized sales or duplication by any means is a violation of law and of the proprietary rights of the author. Purchase this author’s work at www.casinosurveillancenews.com.
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